Healthcare in China

Healthcare in China consists of both public and private medical institutions and insurance programs. About 95% of the population has at least basic health insurance coverage. Despite this, public health insurance generally only covers about half of medical costs, with the proportion lower for serious or chronic illnesses. Under the "Healthy China 2020" initiative, China is currently undertaking an effort to cut healthcare costs, and the government requires that insurance will cover 70% of costs by 2017. The Chinese government is working on providing affordable basic healthcare to all residents by 2020.

China has also become a major market for health-related multinational companies. Companies such as AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, and Merck entered the Chinese market and have experienced explosive growth. China has also become a growing hub for health care research and development.

The above applies to Mainland China. Taiwan and the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau maintain their own separate universal healthcare systems.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been practiced for years, and served as the basis for health care in China for much of its history. Western-inspired evidence-based medicine made its way to China beginning in the 19th Century. When the Communist Party took over in 1949, health care was nationalized, a national "patriotic health campaign" attempted to address basic health and hygiene education, and basic primary care was dispatched to rural areas through barefoot doctors and other state-sponsored programs. Urban health care was also streamlined. However, beginning with economic reforms in 1978, health standards in China began to diverge significantly between urban and rural areas, and also between coastal and interior provinces. Much of the health sector became privatized. As state-owned enterprises shut down and the vast majority of urban residents were no longer employed by the state, they also lost much of the social security and health benefits. As a result, the majority of urban residents paid almost all health costs out-of-pocket beginning in the 1990s, and most rural residents simply could not afford to pay for health care in urban hospitalities.

...
Wikipedia